Welcome to Tubi Tuesday. An ongoing experiment where we dig into some of the weird, underrated, and downright abysmal movies we don’t think our real life friends would let us talk at length about. At the time of writing, this movie is streaming for free on Tubi, the home of Super Bowl LIX!
Directed By: Amy Heckerling
Starring: Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Greg Kinnear
Screenplay By: Amy Heckerling
Twice Amy Heckerling has redefined the teen movie, and twice she followed up those iconoclastic masterpieces with idiosyncratic comedies that called back to Hollywood’s Golden Age.
In 1984, two years after the sublime Fast Times at Ridgemont High, came Johnny Dangerously, a gonzo spoof of 1930s gangster films. Loaded with wall-to-wall gags and carried along by a winsome Michael Keaton performance, Johnny Dangerously was critically derided, even if it almost doubled its budget at the Box Office.
After a decade toiling in the Chevy Chase / talking bab mines, Heckerling returned to once again transform the teen movie in 1995 with the iconic Clueless, a loose adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. A rare box office and cult smash, Clueless was the standard bearer for the teen comedy until…Superbad? High School Musical? Euphoria?
5 years later, her stock never higher, Heckerling wrote and directed Loser (2000). Loser follows American Pie’s Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari in a New York campus comedy that is – ahem – “inspired” by Billy Wilder’s seminal The Apartment. A loose adaptation of a beloved story, starring a cast of exciting up and coming actors? It worked in Clueless, but Loser failed to make its budget back during its theatrical run and is now best-known for being the film that gave us “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus. But I’m here to tell you that this movie is not just a punchline, or a footnote in a filmography peppered with high highs and low lows. Loser, currently available to stream on Tubi, is a time capsule from the turn of the millennium and deserves to be recognized alongside American Pie, Eurotrip, Van Wilder, and even Superbad as the last gasp of a certain type of Hollywood film.
As an update of The Apartment. Loser makes several clever updates. Paul (Jason Biggs) lucks into an off-campus apartment (strangely situated in the student veterinary clinic) after a dispute with his NYU roommates. The roommates – a trio of undergrads that range from buffoonish to demonic – seize upon this opportunity (and Paul’s amiable, doormat nature) to throw parties away from the watchful eye of the college. Meanwhile, Dora (Mena Suvari) is also struggling with housing and is in a messy “relationship” with her English professor, played by a casually menacing Greg Kinnear (the weaponizing of Kinnear’s persona is a highlight of the film). Paul’s pursuit of Dora – and the circumstances and obstacles presented by the Kinnear character and Paul’s on-again, off-again roommates – makes up most of the film, but the joy of the film does not lie in the plot. It’s in the fumbling speech of Jason Biggs, the doe-eyed mania of Mena Suvari, in the tropes subverted and embraced. College is strange and confusing and populated by creatures cartoonish and evil and everything in between. It’s a joy to hang out with our two primary characters, played by actors on the verge of breaking out (but who never quite can make it). Jason Biggs wears a ushanka! They go see Cabaret! It’s 2000 and they are young in New York. For 95 minutes (plus ads), you can be too.
